“You admire it, Mrs. Romayne? It strikes you as true? Ah, but that is very charming of you!”

A confused babel of voices—that curious, indefinable sound which is shrill, though its shrillness would be most difficult to trace; harsh, though it arises from the voices of well-bred men and women; and absolutely unmeaning—was filling the two rooms from end to end; and the soft light diffused by cleverly arranged lamps fell upon groups of smartly dressed women and men equally correct in their attire on male lines. It was about five o’clock, not a pleasant time on a gusty, sleety November afternoon if Nature is allowed to have her own way; but inside these rooms it was impossible to do anything but ignore nature; the air was so soft and warm—faintly scented, too, with flowers—and the colour so rich and delicate. The rooms themselves were a curious hybrid between the fashionable and the artistic; that is to say, they were not arranged according to any conventional tenets, and there were various really beautiful hangings, “bits” of old brass, “bits” of old oak, and “bits” of old china about. But all these, though very cleverly arranged, were distinctly “posed.” The larger of the two rooms was obviously a studio; rather too obviously, perhaps, since the fact was impressed by a certain superabundance of artistic prettinesses. Charming little arrangements in hangings, palms, or what not, “composed” at every turn with the constantly shifting groups. The unconventionalism, in short, was as carefully arranged as was the attitude of the host of the hour as he stood leaning against a large easel, mysteriously curtained, talking to Mrs. Romayne. He was a painter, and a clever painter; he had married a clever wife, and as a result of the working of their respective brains towards the same goal he had become the fashion. “Everybody” went to “the Stormont-Eades’ affairs,” whether the affair in question was a little dinner, a little “evening,” or a little tea-party—Mrs. Stormont-Eade always affixed the diminutive; consequently everybody was obliged to go; a fact which if carefully thought out, will lead to some rather curious conclusions. And the little tea-parties, particularly in the winter, were considered particularly desirable functions. One of these tea-parties was going on now.

Mr. Stormont-Eade himself was a tall, good-looking man who had nearly succeeded, by dint of careful attention to his good points, in conveying the impression that he was a handsome man. He had fine eyes, really remarkably fine, as he was well aware, when they were earnest, and they were looking now with a deep intensity of meaning, which was their normal expression, into Mrs. Romayne’s face; his mouth was not so admirable except when he smiled, and consequently his thin lips were slightly curved; his figure was too thin, and the touch of picturesqueness about his pose and about his velvet coat redeemed it; but his closely-curling hair was cut short and trim, and showed the excellent shape of his head to the best advantage. He had come up to Mrs. Romayne only a minute or two before at the conclusion of a song; a very little very fashionable music was always a feature of the Stormont-Eades’ entertainments, and “good people”—the phrase in this connection representing clever professionals possessed of the social ambition of the day—were glad to sing or play for them; and she had begun to speak of a little picture of his which was one of the themes of the moment.

Mrs. Romayne was dressed from head to foot in carefully harmonised shades of green—green was the colour of the season—with a good deal of soft black fur about it. Her bonnet became her to perfection; her face was so animated that in the soft light a certain haggard sharpness of contour was hardly perceptible. Her smiles and laughs as she exchanged greetings and chat were always ready; if they left her eyes quite untouched, her attention was apparently as free and disengaged as were the gay little gestures with which she emphasized her talk. There was absolutely nothing about her which could have suggested to the ordinary observer anything beyond the surface of finished society woman which she was presenting so brightly to the world. But on the previous evening she had had a note from Falconer, written immediately after his interview with “the girl,” telling her only that he was to have a second interview, and would see her on the following day. That day was now drawing to a close, and she had as yet heard nothing further.

“It enchanted me!” she said now. “But then your things always do enchant me, you know! By-the-bye, people say that you are going to do a big picture. I hope that is not so? Little bits are so much more fascinating.”

Mr. Stormont-Eade smiled—the tender, comprehending smile that was one of his charms.

“No, it is not true,” he said. “One is so fettered with a large work, but little things represent the inspiration, the feeling of the moment. If they have any value, it lies in that.” They had a distinct financial value, though it is doubtful whether the dealers would have recognised the source.

“Ah, the feeling of the moment!” said Mrs. Romayne with pretty fervour. “That is what one so seldom gets, isn’t it? And it is so delightful!”

Then she broke off with a charming smile to shake hands with Mrs. Halse, brought by the constant shifting of the groups into her vicinity. Mrs. Romayne was an excellent listener, and reputed a good talker, though she had probably never said a witty or a clever thing in her life; but she was never exclusive; she was always, so to speak, more or less in touch with the whole room, and ready to extend her circle.

“I’ve been making for you for hours,” she said gaily. “Ah!” The word was an exclamation of pleased surprise as she suddenly became aware of a girl’s figure behind Mrs. Halse; a girl’s figure much better dressed than had been its wont, and very erect, with a latent touch of triumph and excitement on the pretty face. It was Miss Hilda Newton.

“I did not know you were in London,” went on Mrs. Romayne, holding out her hand with gracious cordiality.

“She is staying with me on most important business,” said Mrs. Halse. Mrs. Halse had accommodated herself to her increasing portliness by this time, and had apparently thought it necessary to increase the exuberance of her manner proportionately. Her voice, and the laugh with which she spoke, were equally loud. “Trousseau, you must know. She is to be married directly after Christmas. And when I heard it I wrote and said she’d better come straight to me, and then I could see that she got the right things. Of course, as she’s to live in town, she must have the right things, you know.”

“Of course,” assented Mrs. Romayne gaily and airily. “And you are very busy?”

The last words were addressed to Hilda Newton, whose hand Mrs. Romayne still held. There was a curious mixture of resentment, defiance, and triumph in the girl’s face as she confronted the suave, smiling countenance of the elder woman, which just touched her voice as she answered:

“Very busy indeed!”

She was conscious of a desire so to frame her answer as to suggest the position in society which was to be hers on her marriage, but she could think of no words in which to do it.

“And where is Master Julian?” broke in Mrs. Halse. Delicacy and tact had never been more than names with her; as her fibre, mental and physical, coarsened, she was beginning to think it quite unnecessary to maintain even a bowing acquaintance with these qualities; and her strident voice expressed a great deal that Hilda Newton would like to have expressed. “He must be made to come and offer his congratulations—or perhaps Hilda will compound with him for a particularly handsome wedding-present. He knows Talbot Compton, of course? Otherwise, they must be introduced.”

“He is not here this afternoon, I’m sorry to say,” returned his mother, smiling. Mr. Stormont-Eade, if he could have recognised “the feeling of the moment” in this particular crisis, might have learnt a lesson on several points. “He has turned into a tremendously hard worker, you know. An astonishing fact, isn’t it? I tell him he has secret intentions of taking the bench by storm.”

She was laughing and looking idly away across the room, when quite suddenly she stopped. Just inside the doorway, shaking hands with Mrs. Stormont-Eade, and having evidently just arrived, was Dennis Falconer, and as she caught sight of him there flashed into her eyes, through all the superficial brightness of her face, something which was like nothing but a sheer agony of hunger. It came in an instant, and it was gone in an instant. As he turned away from his hostess and caught her eye, she made him a light gesture and smile of greeting, and turned again to Mrs. Halse; and Mrs. Halse was not even conscious of a pause.

“It’s almost too astonishing, don’t you know!” said that vociferous lady with a laugh. “I don’t half believe in these sudden transformations. If I were you I should make him produce his work every night for inspection. It’s my belief he is getting into mischief. These hard-working young men are such frauds!”

She laughed loudly, and at that moment accident brought Falconer, on his way across the room, to a standstill a few paces from her. He had evidently intended to pass the little group, but Mrs. Halse frustrated his intention. With a peremptory gesture she claimed his attention, and as he drew nearer, she said boisterously:

“Now, don’t you agree with me, Mr. Falconer? Aren’t these good, hard-working boys the greatest scamps going?”

Falconer was looking very severe and impassive; he shook hands with Mrs. Halse, and then turned perforce to Mrs. Romayne, taking her hand with an almost solemn gravity, which contrasted sharply with the careless gaiety with which she extended it.

“I didn’t expect to see you this afternoon,” she said lightly. “Stupid of me, though; every one comes to the Stormont-Eades’.”

“I did not expect to meet you,” he answered sternly. “I have called at Queen Anne Street.”

He had been astounded at not finding her at home. He was distinctly of opinion that afternoon teas were not for a woman who should be sitting in sackcloth and ashes, and the sight of her had shocked not only his sense of propriety, but some deeper sense of the reality of the crisis at which he was assisting. Perhaps Mrs. Romayne understood that her presence at the “little tea-party” scandalised him, for there was a strange, bitter smile on her lips before she turned to Mrs. Halse, and said, with a rather hard, strained ring in her gay voice:

“You’ll get no support from my cousin, I assure you, Mrs. Halse. He was a most praiseworthy——”

Her voice was drowned in a ringing chord on the piano, and as the prelude to a song filled the room, she made a mocking gesture expressive of the impossibility of making herself heard; and turning her face towards the singer, as she stood by Falconer’s side, she composed herself to listen. Her face grew rather set and fixed in its lines of animated attention as the song went on, and when it ceased, her comments were of the indefinitely delighted order. She made them very easily and brightly, however, and then she turned carelessly to Falconer.

“Are you thinking of staying long?” she said lightly. “I rather want to talk to you, do you know—this unfortunate man is my man of business, you must know, Mrs. Halse—and I thought perhaps that I could drive you somewhere.”

“I shall be happy to go whenever you like,” was the grave answer.

Mrs. Romayne laughed lightly.

“Oh, I don’t want to take you away immediately!” she said. “You’ve only just come, I’m afraid. In a little while!”

She smiled and nodded to him, and to Mrs. Halse and Miss Newton, and moved away to speak to some other people.

About a quarter of an hour later Falconer, who was a somewhat grim ornament to society in the interval, saw her coming smiling towards him.

“Ready?” she said. “That’s very nice of you! Suppose we go, then?”

He followed her out of the room and down the stairs, her flow of comments and laughter never ceasing; put her into her carriage, and got in himself.

“Home!” she said sharply to the coachman. The door banged, they rolled away into the darkness and the wet, and her voice stopped suddenly.

They rolled along for a few minutes in total silence. Shut up alone with her like that, the isolation and quiet following so suddenly on the crowd and noise of a moment before, Falconer’s only conscious feeling was one of almost stupid discomfort. Her sudden silence, too, had an indefinable but very unpleasant effect upon him. At last he said with awkward displeasure:

“I was going to write to you! I——”

She lifted her hand quickly and stopped him.

“When we get in!” she said in a quick, tense voice. “You can come in? It is just six. It need not take long.”

“I am quite at your service.”

She leant back in her corner with a sharp breath of relief, and neither moved nor spoke again until the carriage drew up at her own door.

She opened the door with a latchkey, and moved quickly across the hall to the foot of the stairs, motioning to Falconer to follow her. Then she stopped abruptly and turned. A servant was just crossing the hall to the dining-room, where the preliminary preparation for a dinner-party could be seen.

“Is Mr. Julian in?” said Mrs. Romayne sharply.

“Not yet, ma’am.”

“If he should come in before I go to dress, tell him that I am engaged.”

She turned again and went on to the drawing-room.

“Now!” she said in a breathless peremptory monosyllable, facing Falconer as he shut the door. She did not attempt to sit down herself or to invite Falconer to do so. All her senses seemed to be absorbed in the desperate anxiety with which her face was sharp and haggard. She looked ten years older than she had looked in Mr. Stormont-Eade’s studio. Falconer answered her directly with no preliminary formalities.

“I saw the—the young woman yesterday,” he began; “but I was unable to bring about any arrangement. I gave her twenty-four hours for consideration, and this afternoon I called to see her again.”

“Yes, yes!”

“I found that she had left the house this morning, leaving no address.”

“Left!” The erect, tense figure confronting him staggered back a step as though a heavy blow had fallen upon it, and Mrs. Romayne caught desperately at the back of a chair. “Left—and you don’t know where she is? You’ve settled nothing? We’ve no hold over her!”

The words had come from her in hoarse, gasping sentences, each one growing in intensity until the last vibrated with an agony of very despair, but Falconer’s face grew grimmer as he listened. How it was he could not have told, but a strange, uncomfortable remembrance of the girl he had seen on the previous day, which had haunted him at more or less inopportune moments ever since, seemed to rise now and accentuate all his usual antagonism to the woman who was talking of her.

“I think you need not distress yourself,” he said stiffly. “Perhaps I had better tell you at once that your son knows no more of her whereabouts than we do.”

The drawn look of despair relaxed on Mrs. Romayne’s face; relaxed into an agony of questioning doubt.

“Doesn’t know?” she said sharply. “Julian doesn’t know?”

“The landlady of the house,” continued Falconer, “a very unpleasant and loquacious woman, was eager to inform me that on the arrival of your son yesterday afternoon, about an hour after I saw the young woman, there was a quarrel between them and that he left the house in anger. To-day, very shortly before my arrival, he returned and was astonished to find that the young woman was gone. He demanded her address, and was furious to find that it was not known. I think there is no room for doubt that the young woman has left him!”

The colour was coming back to Mrs. Romayne’s face slowly and in burning patches, and her clutch on the chair was almost convulsive.

“Left him!” she said under her breath. “Left him!” There was a moment’s pause, and then she said in a harsh, high-pitched, concentrated tone: “Do you mean—for good? Why? Why should she?”

“I am sorry to have to say it to you,” said Falconer slowly, “but I fear the case against your son is even blacker than it appears on the surface. I think it more than possible that he deceived the young woman.”

The slowly-formed conviction—and it became conviction only as he spoke the words—was the result of that vague and disturbing impression made on Falconer on the preceding day by “the young woman.” It had worked slowly and almost without consciousness on his part, but it had refused to die out, and it had attained the only fruition possible to it in his last words.

“And you believe that she is really gone? That there is nothing more to fear from her?”

It was the same absorbed, intent tone, and her eyes, fixed eagerly on Falconer now, were hard and glittering. The terrible significance of his words, with all the weight of tragedy they held, seemed to have passed her by, to have no existence for her. It was as though the sense in her which should have responded to it was numbed or non-existent. And Falconer, scandalised and revolted, replied sternly:

“I think you need have no anxiety on that score. She has disappeared of her own free will, and your son, upon reflection, will probably be glad to accept so easy a solution of what he doubtless recognises by this time as a troublesome complication.” There was a rigid and utterly antipathetic condemnation of Julian in his voice; he had judged the young man, and sentenced him as vicious to the core, and for all his experience, he held too rigidly to his narrow conception to consider the possible effect upon youth and passion of so sudden and total a thwarting. “My only fear,” he continued, “is that serious injustice has been done. The young woman is by no means the kind of young woman I was led to believe her. I have grave doubts as to whether it was not our duty to enforce a marriage upon your son, instead of negativing the suggestion.”

The words were probably rather more than he would have been prepared to stand to had they been put to a practical issue, and he had spoken them, though he hardly knew it, more from a severe desire to arouse what he called in his own mind “some decent feeling” in the woman to whom he spoke, than from any other reason. From that point of view they failed completely. It was a bright light of triumph that flashed into Mrs. Romayne’s eyes as she said quickly, and in an eager, vibrating tone, which seemed less an answer to him personally than to the bare fact to which he had given words:

“Fortunately there is no more fear of that.”

The tall clock standing in a corner of the room chimed the three-quarters as she spoke, and she started as she heard it.

“It is a quarter to seven,” she said. “And I have people to dinner. You have nothing else to tell me, have you? Nothing to advise?”

“Nothing,” was the grim answer.

“You do not think—would it be a good thing, do you think, to have the girl traced so that we could always be sure?”

“You need take no further trouble in the matter, in my opinion. If you should observe anything in your son’s conduct to revive your uneasiness, the question must, of course, be reconsidered. You will observe him closely, no doubt.”

There was a moment’s curiously dead silence, and then it was broken by a strange half-laugh.

“No doubt!” said Mrs. Romayne. “No doubt!”

Another pause, and then she turned and glanced at the clock.

“I must go,” she said. “Thank you.”

She held out her hand, and he just touched it as though conventionality alone compelled him.

“I have considered myself bound in duty in the matter,” he said stiffly. “Good night!”

No touch of artificiality returned to her manner even in dismissing him. It remained hard and practical. Her intense absorption in the subject of their interview did not yield by so much as a hair’s breadth, and she remained absolutely impervious to any thought of the man before her. His slight, cold touch of her hand, the sternness of his obvious condemnation of her, were evidently absolutely unobserved by her.

“Good night!” she returned; and as he left her without another word, she crossed the room rapidly and went upstairs to dress for dinner.

The dinner-party of that evening was unanimously declared by the guests to be quite the most delightful Mrs. Romayne had ever given. The dinner, the flowers, all the arrangements, were perfection, of course; but even when this is the case the “go” of a dinner-party may be a variable or even a non-existent quality; and it was the “go” of this particular occasion that was so remarkable. All the component parts of the party seemed to be animated and fused into one harmonious whole by the spirits of the hostess and host. Mrs. Romayne was so charming, so bright, so full of vivacity; Julian, who put in his appearance only just before the announcement of dinner, was so boyish, so lively, so ingenuous. He was a little pale when he first appeared, and the lady he took down to dinner reproached him with working too hard; but as the evening wore on he gained colour. The relations between himself and his mother had always been quite one of the features of Mrs. Romayne’s entertainments, but those relations had never been more charmingly accentuated than they were to-night.

Until he came gaily in among her guests that evening, Julian and his mother had not met since that second interview which had prompted her summons to Falconer. Julian had dined out on both the intervening evenings, and it was easily to be arranged under these circumstances, if either of the pair so willed it, that forty-eight hours should go by without their coming in contact with one another. And an onlooker aware of the circumstances of their last meeting, and watching the mother and son through the evening now, might have reflected that the laws of heredity seldom operate exclusively through one parent.

“Good night, dear Mrs. Romayne! Such a delightful evening! How I do envy you that dear boy of yours! It’s the greatest pleasure to see you two together.”

The speaker was a good-natured old lady, and she had thought it no harm to put into words what her fellow-guests had only thought. She was the last departure, and Mrs. Romayne followed her to the top of the stairs, with a laughing deprecation of the words which was very fascinating, and then turned back into the drawing-room with another “good night,” as Julian prepared to attend the old lady to her carriage.

The hall door shut with a bang, and then there was a moment’s pause. The mother in the drawing-room above, and the son in the hall below, stood for an instant motionless. A subtle change had come over Mrs. Romayne’s face the instant she found herself alone. It had sharpened slightly, and an eager, haggard anticipation was striving to express itself in her eyes, only to be resolutely veiled. But to Julian’s face as he stood with his hand still resting on the hall door there came a great and sudden alteration. All the light and gaiety died out of it before a wild, fierce expression of rebellion and distaste, repressed almost instantly by a pale, sullen look of determination. He moved, and Mrs. Romayne, hearing his step, moved slightly also; he came up the stairs, and as he came he seemed to force back into his face the easy smile it had worn all the evening.

“It’s been a great success, hasn’t it, dear?” he said lightly as he crossed the drawing-room threshold.

“A great success!” she said in the same tone—though in her case it rang a little thin.

An instant’s silence followed, and then she laid her hand airily on his arm. Her lips were white and dry with agitation, and she knew it; she wondered desperately whether her voice rang as unnaturally in Julian’s ears as it did in her own, as she said with what she meant for perfect ease:

“Dear boy, let us say our final words upon that wretched business to-night and wake up clear of it to-morrow. May I be happy about you? That’s all there is to be said, isn’t it?”

She tried to smile, but she knew the effort was a ghastly failure, and again she wondered whether Julian saw. She need not have feared! Julian was busy with his own histrionic difficulties, and had neither sight nor hearing for her.

“You may be quite happy, little mother!” he said, and the frank tenderness of his tone and manner were only very slightly over-accentuated. “I’ve made up my mind to do as you wish, and I won’t make such a fool of myself again!”

They were standing close together, looking each into the other’s face, and he patted her hand as it lay on his arm as he finished. Yet between them, parting them as seas of ice could not have parted them, there lay a shadow beneath which love itself survives only as the cruellest form of torture; the shadow of the unspoken with its chill, unmoveable dead weight against which no man or woman can prevail.

The hand on Julian’s arm trembled a little. The terrible presence, which is never recognised except by those to whom its chill is as the chill of death, was making itself vaguely felt about his mother’s heart. She let her eyes stray from his face with a painful, tremulous movement, and her fingers tightened round his arm.

“It is all over?” she murmured in a low voice. “It is all over, really?”

As her self-command failed her his seemed to strengthen. He patted her hand again reassuringly, and said, confidently:

“Yes, dear, indeed! I’ve only got to beg your pardon, and I do that with all my heart.”

He stooped and kissed her tenderly, and as he did so she seemed to rally her forces with a tremendous effort. She returned his kiss with a pretty, effusive embrace, though her lips were as cold as ice.

“I grant it freely,” she said. “And if I’ve felt obliged to be—well, shall we say rather autocratic?—for once in a way, you must forgive me, too, eh?”

But the unspoken, terrible reality as it is, was to be touched by no such ghastly travesty. Julian’s laugh was only a firmer echo of his mother’s gay artificiality of tone, but as she heard it her lips turned whiter still.

“That’s of course,” he said. “Of course.”

“Then it’s all settled!” she responded gaily. “We’ll draw a veil over the past from to-night, and behave better in the future. Good night, dear boy!” She kissed him again, patted him lightly on the shoulder and moved away. On the threshold she stopped, turned, and blew him a kiss over her shoulder. “Forgiveness and oblivion from to-night,” she said; and there was a strange, defiant gaiety in her voice.

With another smile and a nod she went upstairs, and as she went her face grew lined and drawn, like the face of an old woman, and the defiance that had lurked in her voice stared out of her eyes, half-wild and reckless.